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Comment by VoodooJuJu | Hacker News Reader

>Advertisement is a pollution, a parasite, a cancer on modern society

A lot of people don't know this, but advertising existed in ancient society as well: https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/advertising-in-ancient...

Although there are many modern-born societal ills, advertising is not one of them, as it's far older than modernity. There's something essential about advertising - not essential as in required or necessary - but essence-ial as in the essence or spirit of advertising has existed for thousands of years.

I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms.

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Something can be a cancer in modern times and have existed long ago. For example: cancer.

I'm going to be very blunt: equating modern advertising with whatever the roman merchants did is either incredibly naive bordering on stupidity, or it's arguing in bad faith, bordering on malevolent faith.

Advertising may have existed since ancient times, but nothing like what we have today. With better technology has come the ability to do so far more aggressively than anything that was possible back then.

Before radio, advertising in places like London was wild, far surpassing what we are used to. Ads covered the buildings up to the 3rd floor. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising_in_Brit...

This Roman stuff is barely advertising. They're talking about the signs on the front of buildings advertising what goes on in those buildings, and a guy who got rich selling garum having a mosaic on the floor of his own home that said that his garum was awesome. The last citation in the article is just bizarre, interpreting graffiti as advertisements for oneself.

The profession of advertising is only recent, and afaik advertising itself didn't really exist at all until the dawn of patent medicines, that since they were all frauds could only differentiate by circulating their dishonest claims as widely as possible.

> I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms.

So, I think that this is a misunderstanding that it is important to avoid. There was Roman advertising if 1) you think that merchants decorating the inside of their own houses with art referring to the things that they got rich selling is advertising, 2) you think that inns and restaurants having their own names painted on their outside walls, and possibly having names that implied self-praise is advertising, and/or 3) you think that writing graffiti is self-advertising.

I think the idea that advertising is a force that will automatically express itself through other equally intrusive channels if suppressed is a made up story.

> you think that writing graffiti is self-advertising

I wonder what else you think it could be? The vast majority of graffiti works I have seen, whether in person or in books of graffiti art, consist of nothing more than the writer's alias. Some people advertise their persistence, by scrawling their names in as many places as possible; some advertise their athleticism and courage, by writing in spots which are difficult or dangerous to reach; others advertise their artistic skill, writing their names in elaborate style with color and shading; but they're virtually all just writing their names, over and over, trying to build a reputation.

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